I agree, being able to modify racial colours in game would be a fantastic addition! I remember a few times where I made a decision that was... HIGHLY QUESTIONABLE during race creation, but was forced to stick with it through the game even though my interface was unusable and my ships looked ugly.

-Allow Drengin and Korath to upgrade mining starbases past 9%.

It seems like maybe this was overlooked, or maybe it was assumed you could find a friendly AI to trade techs with, but either way it seems odd that the most powerful military forces cannot utilize a military starbase because of their inability to get the technologies that give you better mining. If this is intended for balance, I suppose I can live with it, but it seems like an accident of the tech tree more than anything else.

-Make the AI use precursor squares more intelligently.

I'm not sure if this popped up in TA or if it was already in DA, but in two games now, I've seen the AI put things like trade centers on top of the amazing +700% research/manufacturing tiles! I'm aware the AI is in development for TA, but I want to be sure this will be looked into.

I'd like to see the research speed turned down a bit. An option like "painfully Slow" or something similar would be great. I like nice long drawn out games, and it seems the research speed is just a tad too fast for my taste. I like to see more of the tree get get actual use before the next new thing gets researched...especially weapon and defence tech.

I'd also like to see some changes made to the initial ships. The miner and colony ship are fine, but that Flagship is way too high tech for the beginning of the game. If we could have the option of toggling initial ships that would be perfect. It would also slow the game down a bit more, which is exatly how I like to play.


Sorry to go on, but I've got one more. Could we have a bit more variety in the number of major events? The ones that are there are great, but a few more would really spice it up a bit. I enjoy having these major events drastically change the playing field, it just seems like you run out of events at a certain point. For folks who enjoy the long game, could a few more events be added? Here are some suggestions:

-A race's AI creations rebels against them and creates a subrace bent on wiping out their creators. Similiar to the Jagged Knife, but with subtle differences. It would only appear in one race's worlds and it would initially be at war with this race. The population of the worlds it takes would be used either as slave labor or used as biofuel. The later would put a time ticker on how long you have before the worlds population reaches zero and is once again uncolonized.

-Discovery of an ultra high level world, but with an automated military defence station in orbit. (Yeah, I know it's similiar to an idea used in another game of the same genre that will go unnamed.) If the station is too difficult, put a fleet of bioships in orbit, or automated AI ships.

-Eugenics war! A race, neitral or evil, genetically engineers a few members of it's own race into super soldiers. These super soldiers decide they are superior to their creators and should themselves be the masters, so they rebel. They could become a minor race of their own, but with much higher survivability. Maybe they have most or all the tech of their creators and have enhanced soldering...or whatever combination of attributes would make sense.

-Tear in Time-Space. All ship speeds are dratically reduced. Place a tech in the tree to counter the effect as with the disease event.

-Galactic resource explosion! An accident occurs at a galactic resource mining station that would remove a galactic resource.

-Unknown wave of cosmic radiation slams into a galactic resource and magnifies it's effect. It would effectly double the bonus given by the resource.

I tried to read the most of this thread, sorry if this has been said before.

I would like a governors tab-like option to upgrade all of one specific structure to an other kind. With all the new different techs you can sometimes get a lot of different versions of the same kind of structure. In my last game I had adv. trade center, some other trade center and the evil bazaar economic-thingy. The bazaar gave me the most +% at the time, but since it wasn't on the upgrade path for adv. trade I had to upgrade every single tile manually. And that kind of micromanagement is not to much fun. And a couple of conquered planets later I got the stock market, and had to do it all over again, but with more tiles :/ And with every new version of a structure it's only going to be more micro, with different versions of fatories, morale buildings and so on. Please consider a structure upgrade manager.

This might not be relavant to the color problem, but you know the pallet of colors on the screen where you choose how your ships look? Well, I think if you had all the default colors of all the races on a separate pallet, then you could choose the default colors without having to go all the way to other files and reset the race configurations.

One thing I would love is that, instead of troops being so throw away, that you actually raise and maintain legions which then can gain expereience etc. That way planets can have trained troops and militia units.

It seems odd to me that space combat has got so much attention but planetary combat is just lacking, it is a contrast right down the line from tech available through to graphics.

Yet, conquering planets should be the hardest thing you do as it yeilds the most reward and really is the core to the game, more planets = more income/research/production/people = I win.

Also, planetary combat should take quite a few turns to play out - at least a month. That way you can have scenarios where attackers can add troops, the defenders can break the blockade and reinforce etc.

As a final wish - why do the troop transports disappear - they should stay, even if they have no troops on board

Nov. 12,

I`d like to be able to sell / give mining bases to major / minor
races.

I`d like to trade / buy space ships from minor races.

Thankx / Hoping,

Prof.  

Nov. 12,

I`d like to put a spy down in a revolting mining base to
quell any thoughts of dissertion.

I`d like to put spies down in alien mining bases to agitate
for revolt.

Thankx,

Prof.  

I think this would be a huge benefit for beginners and nice for veterans:

If you could make a mini-icon in the bottom right (or left) of the icon that represents a planetary improvement. For example a farm could have a little "food" icon inside the farm icon so players won't have to know what the improvement looks like to know what it is - because as you upgrade an improvement, the look changes. How many factories do I have? A quick glance would tell you regardless of the technology level that you're at.

Another thing would be; when you select an un-improved green square, the list on the right shows what you can build there. Currently it's sorted alphabetically - that's annoying because as you get different technologies your "lab" or "factory" moves in the list according to it's new name and you have to search for it. It would be better if they were always in the same order regardless of the name, or if the name was like: "F - Advanced farm", "F - Xeno farming" so they'd all stay put. Also, an icon next to the text would be useful for the same purpose.

Change and lower the current tourism income but instead add economic bonus tiles simular to the already influence, research, food, industrial. Right now that is the only building without a tile bonus why not add it??

Even better, just make bonus tiles moddable.

I agree that there needs to be more differentiation in not only the names of the weapons techs but the appearance in battle as well. Right now a laser II looks the same for every race regardless of what name is assigned to it. Merely renaming a tech for a different race does not make it unique in my book. That being said, the beta is a work in progress and I give credit to the developers for what they've done so far.

I don't know if this would be considered a major change, or even if it's been suggested before, so feel free to ignore.

How about linking trade goods to specific races and their unique technology trees. For example, allow only the Korath and Drengin the option of building Tir-Quan Training. Then, at the same time, make the AI place a higher trade value on these goods. This should allow for more interesting diplomacy/trade options.

This would, in my opinion, also have the added advantage of being more realistic, as one would expect different cultures to invent different products -- or excel in the manufacturing of them -- just as they do here on Earth.

I'd like to be able to place a spy on an enemy ship. It would lift the fog of war for that ship and whatever its sensor range was. The spy should be able to attempt sabotage to destroy the ship (chance of success based on the civ's espionage ability score with a difficulty modifier based on the experience level of the ship and whether the ship in question is the civ's flagship). Only ships currently visible would be allowed to have a spy placed on it.

This would be usefull for neutrality learning centers, the end level torian schools that don't upgrade from the second level and other multiple occasions when a "high-level" building doesn''t auto upgrade from a "low-level" building. These buildings sometimes don't upgrade automatically for good reasons (for example last level torian schools are less effective production/upkeep wise as second level schools but have more output than second level schools) but upgrading one per one on larger scale maps can be a pain.

Also what would be nice is having version number for ships when they are upgraded. For example when you upgrade a ship you have a box for the name it would be usefull to have two fields to fill in name and version number. When you upgrade a ship the name would stay the same but by default the version number would increment automatically.
Something along this line must have been already proposed before but it would really facilitate upgrading ships when you upgrade them often.

The new race specific techs has got me 'quite excited', so....

some more Tech Suggestions:

1. the irony of my torians building an arena of agony cos it's a better morale building made me wonder whether alien buildings should come with a penalty of some kind (say a morale penalty) which can wax or wane as the game cycles from cultural love-ins to xenophobia....which led me to....

2. trading/stealing tech is made a 2 stage process. trading/stealing tech places that tech in your tech tree to *research* (at a lower research cost, possibly only one turn - based on your scientists translating/adapting/exploring/theorising hardware/plans). Researching traded/stolen alien tech can then bring up warnings if that tech is:

a. Not of your alignment.
b. belongs to someone with a historic animosity.
c. is simply too alien to your culture to adapt.
d. etc

and a (morale) penalty would apply if you researched it or used it.

3. Trade goods and Special Abilities might need a good look at in light of the new tech trees. Are they needed any more?

4. Perhaps connect startup racial attributes to specific or mix of (untradeable?) tech such as History of Extremes for Terran - it might then be possible if the AI/Racial Tech Tree is connected to a specific startup tech, you could play a game of GC2 with randomised race AI?

back to the mill.....

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but I don't think they have. Is there any reason why on the start up screen when I choose abundant for asteroids the outline is red. It seems logical that it should be green like the rest, but the asteroids border seems reversed for all stages. Maybe I'm being thick, but I'd like it to be the other way around, purely for cosmetics.

I was wondering if you could put a shipyard editor on the main menu. It takes me a while to load a game just to design a ship for a screen shot. Also someone had made a post that talked about space mines (the ones that blow up when you hit them.)  I thought that it would be cool to have those.

I would like to see Particle Beams made more unique rather than appearing and sounding just like Plasma weapons.

The idea that planetary improvements you cannot use are destroyed actually makes a lot of sense... basically when the Yor conquer a planet they will bulldoze farms and use them for something else... humans will bulldoze slave pits etc... it might be awesome advanced tech like more advanced factories, but that doesn't help you if you cannot use them.

That being said, There is one usage I could think of. Salvage. When you conquer a planet and it has unusable tech structures, rather then just having them destroyed you could have them replaced with "alien structure" structure which could be "upgraded" into something useable, that gives more realism as structures are basically retooled. That advanced lab complex is emptied of the uninteliigible devices and instead filled with computers, bulldozing and rebuilding only what is really necessary. Thus saving alittle of construction cost.

Or maybe have a conversion option... Where each building has a list of other buildings it can be converted to at specific costs... or you can just bulldoze it and rebuild something completely different.

Easier map zooming! Have the map zoom in on mousewheel scroll wherever the pointer happens to be, not in the middle of the screen like it is now. Zooming, then moving the map to centre in on the action is a chore.

Supreme Commander has this behavior if an example is needed, though I'm sure you all already know that.

Everyone will love it

option to make all your ships move at once... turns take too long on huge maps.

What I do is zoom right in to an empty part of space while the turn is happening. Anything off-screen happens at the same time.

I posted this a while back but figured I'd bring it up again.

I really would like to see differences in weapons and shields in the different races. Instead of them all going up the same tree, maybe rename the weaponry for each race, give them slightly different specs, and perhaps even a different color when you see them fire them in battle viewing. Some unique weapons / defense would be cool as well, like one race only had ONE defense tree that upped the defense for all 3 categories with only one attachment. Or perhaps one race might only be able to build lasers but they are able to build stronger ones than any other race. One race might have the ability to create ships with a very high number of hitpoints but lack any true defensive techs. These differences would bring a bit of strategy to how you tech up and who you should ally with and who you shouldn't based on your situation.

Most Sci-fi games and movies have noticable differences in the way main empires are portrayed, Star trek, star wars, for example. I think maybe this would increase the goal you are trying to reach, more diversity with the races. I'm sure this would also increase replay value, the more choices the more I'm going to want to go back and try a different way of playing.

I hate it already.

I find it annoying to have to re-adjust my view to, lets say the center of the map, because the game did some crazy thing such as zooming to a far corner.